Slashdot Mirror
Utility Cuts Short BPL Trial
fatboy writes "The ARRL is reporting that Alliant Energy has called an early end to its broadband over power line (BPL) pilot project in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The "evaluation system" went live March 30, and plans were for it to remain active until August or September. Alliant shut it down June 25. Ongoing, unresolved HF interference from the system to retired engineer Jim Spencer, W0SR, and other amateurs prompted the ARRL to file a complaint to the FCC on Spencer's behalf demanding it be shut down."
"unresolved HF interference from the system to retired engineer Jim Spencer"
It must be bad if poor old Jim was interfered with.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
I happen to live in the Cedar Rapids/Marion area and I didn't even know this was there. Why doesn't anyone tell us anything?! It would be an alternative to Mediacom and Qwest.
I'm incredibly glad to hear this. BPL has the potential to kill ham radio (and actually lot's of other HF radio services) as it uses HT powerlines that were not intended to carry HF signals and act as really excellent antenna (in fact the US Navy uses them to transmit extremly low frequency/long wavelength signlas to its submerged subs! So we know they work as antenna!)
I'm also glad the FCC isn't actually as big a patsy of the BPL industry as it first appeared. Cheers to the FCC and let's hope this is the first nail in the coffin of a truly bad idea.
As an aside: I hope this discourages the power industry muppets in the UK from trying the same thing.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
- Put up power lines - = huge aerial system
- Inject wideband RF into huge aerial system
- Interference!
In fact the whole idea of RF over power lines, though attractive at first sight, is a triumph of will over physics. A system designed to take kilovolts at around 50-60Hz, with mechanical switches all over the network and a mixture of capacitors and inductors to adjust power factor, is not a benign environment for RF. But people keep trying to do it. There have been attempts at LANs over household wiring - but wireless networking has just about killed that with a combination of speed, convenience and safety.You can adapt a car to travel on water, but the result is expensive and technically poor. In the same way, I feel broadband over AC power is a cross-model step too far.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
cant you buy kits that allow you to put a network in over powerlines... like a consumer version of this?
This is exactly the same reason that a Broadband over power lines experiment was given up by one of the UKs power providers (The predecessor to Scottish power I think).
I wonder why someone thaught it would be different in the US, even with its more stringent laws about RF interference.
Do these people not do basic searches on prior work?
You got all of that from Art Bell you big faker! ;-)
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
I remember something like this being tried about 5 years ago. It had the amateur radio community in an uproar. Something to do with street lights re-radiating the high-speed internet data in the form of electromagnetic energy. Apparently they did little to fix it. Shame; I wanted to be the first one on my block to have the other cable.
The last paragraph is quite telling actually:
That BPL means 'Broadband over Power Line', by the way.
I have to stop wasting so much time reading Slashdot. It's interfering with my crystal meth addiction.
Nice. I'm sure comms companies all over the US will jump at the chance to get the ARRL's contribution and involvement in future.
Either way, it's great to see that the FCC is standing firm to protect sad lonely guys holed up in their bunkers listening to strangers over the airwaves from the interference of sad young(er) lonely guys holed up in their bunkers looking at strangers over the ether.
I posted this on Jan 20th. Read it here ;)
9 47 8957
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=111720&cid=
Life is not for the lazy.
Somehow the defeat is poetic justice.
Seastead this.
I live in Cedar Rapids and participated in the program. I didn't RTFA so I'm not sure what it says about this, but the mailer I got a couple days ago didn't say anything about a complaint, it just basically said Alliant had met its goals for the program ahead of schedule, and after working out a few issues there is a possibility the system may be implemented on a larger scale.
On the 0th day, God created C
I've never understood why they were so gung-ho about this stupid idea in the first place when most power grids already have multi-core fiber optic cable hidden inside the neutral wire. (they use it to communicate between substations and most of the capacity is dark - I put hundreds of miles of this stuff in the air back in the mid-nineties so I know from whence I speak) The power company already has the most valuable easements. Couple that with their existing fiber grid and they could have fiber to the curb in every major market for a lot less than the phone or cable companies who very often have to mount on existing power poles and pay $1 or more per pole for easement rights.
That's how SPRINT became a major Playa in the long distance and later, the backbone market - they used their existing easements. (for those who live in a cave, SPRINT stands for Southern Pacific Railway INTernational - your phone call 'rides the rails'...or more precisely, runs over fiber optic plowed into the roadbed of their gigantic network of railroad tracks)
I don't know if I should dignify a response, but...
1. Eh.
2. W0SR is some guy's Amateur radio call sign.
3. You are a real smart ass...
If BPL was possible, it'd be in SimCity.
One word: Fiber. Seriously, just string fiber optic lines along your power lines, you can easily mount repeaters and whatnot on the power towers and then do your last mile with good old cat5 cables (Ok...fine, last 328 feet) terminating in a repeater at the demarcation point.
Put up power lines - = huge aerial system
... :-)
Given the megawatt carrier and huge lengths of wire, how far would this signal be expected to propagate into deep space?
Even if distant SETI programmes can't pick up any data-over-powerlines modulation, it's conceivable that the periodic phase and frequency adjustments might be an indicator of intelligence too
I think we all know what this means. Some poor sucker is going to have to go out and start twistng power lines together, to get a pair... Pretty soon, it'll be "PowerLinesTx"
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
How about if we start lighting up hell of transmitters for every frequency, jamming every god damn thing you use! Cable, Cell, AM, FM, UHF, VHF, Microwave, And were going to do it with thousands of watts of power! Your TV will be herring-boned 24/7. Your PC monitors go black. Your wireless unusable. Your copper line phones will have interference. Your wireless phones will be jammed. Your garage door openers will open and close, your sperm count will be down and you'll all fucking have cancer by age 45!
FUCK BPL
Ok, I entirely understand why these folks are mad about the interference caused by BPL. I have an amateur radio license myself.
It seems to me, however, that if these hams are going to protest the deployment of last-mile(s) broadband technology, they'll be better off promoting a creative, alternative solution. They may lobby all they please, but the population of hams will continue to shrink, and networking will become so ubiquitous, that within 50 years we'll need every broadband delivery mechanism we can get. Delivering power and data over the same link is efficient. Perhaps, by then, we'll be better able to control the interference.
So, instead of fighting the inevitable, why don't they deploy wireless mesh networks to the BPL trial areas? They need to show the locals that broadband can be had for cheap, and without causing their garage doors to open and close at random, TVs to be fuzzy, etc.
I'm sorry but everything I know about amateur radio I got from Frequency, so how the fuck would I know what the article writeup is about unless, oh I don't know, the guy writing it actually gives me enough information to understand it? All he had to do was change "..and other amateurs prompted.." to "..and other amateur radio operators prompted.." and hey, look at that, it all makes sense now.
So tell me, are ham operators always so defensive? I only asked a simple question and it a) gets marked "Troll" and b) have you jump down my throat about it. No wonder ham is a dying hobby; nobody is allowed to ask a few questions!
First you don't seem to be too clear on how much interference there actually is. It is not just hams getting harmonic interference. Visit the ARRL site and read up on the DETAILS specifically the frequencies, and how much power.
That's all the FCC should be in charge of anyway, Freq and Pwr.
As a ham you should know that it wouldn't be too hard to destroy BPL equipment. When there reaches a diminishing return from damaged equipment, then it will go away. Unlike red light cameras (Which are also being destroyed) it will be more serious. Non hams may become involved. We don't OWE everybody broadband access. The power companies are greedy fscking bastards.
So when your power goes completely out, and your eyes are burning your hair is falling out and you have cancer. don't say I didn't tell ya so.
...they lied to you
"they'll be better off promoting a creative, alternative solution. "
Energis (?) in the UK already use Fibre optic cable wrapped around the HT cable for broadband signals. They made a wrig that travels down the HT cable and wraps (spirals) the fibre around it. Simple and easy.
So these guys could do the same without all the interference problems.
Nope, it doesn't appear to have been fully rejected. Scottish Hydro Electric appear to offer the service. Website with details here:
Cheers,Scottish Hydro
Mike
What if the power company were to send tinfoil hats to local ARRL members? Wouldn't that solve the problem?
Yep, it'll solve the problem. It works just the same as cutting your phone line, or cable to filter porn spam from your e-mail. It's 100% effective. The false positive rate is also 100% just as the intended communications link is now down.
The truth shall set you free!
Sprint didn't stand for anything, although it was an offshoot of the southern Pacific Railway.
So does this mean that you can listen in on what sites your neighbour browses if you have the right equipment?
Maybe if you stated a legitimate question with a factual or even inquisitive tone, it might have gotten a serious response. However, your inquiry started out with mock sympathy for "Poor Jim", and the rest was dripping with sarcasm. What kind of answer did you really expect?
No, not all Hams are defensive, but those that are attacked by people with an "attitude" will defend themselves vociferiously.
If you _really_ want to learn something, lose the attitude, and you'll find most Hams actually enjoy passing on knowledge and information about their hobby to others!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Everyone knows Tinfoil Hats only protect the wearer against Trolls...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I think there is an ongoing test in Cincinnati, Ohio. Anyone out there live there that knows if there have been similar complaints there?
Good thing I live in Cincinnati, where we not only have had the testing, but they are rolling it out now. Yea!
Why did people object to the fiber? Compared to HV lines, it's a tiny piece of cabling.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Here in Solvay, NY (just outside Syracuse) we are looking at broadband over power lines. The possible difference here is that the village of Solvay is served by its own power plant. One of the perks of living here is 3 cent a KwH electric service.
The link below leads to an article about the upcoming service:
link here
Note that they do not mention the issue of RFI in the article.
I admit that it is attractive as the speed is higher and the cost lower than my current DSL.
If you are truely a licensed Amateur AND a slashdot reader, then you have no excuse whatsoever to actually go and RTFA.
If you had done even a modicum of research into this, you would know that what the ARRL and others are complaining about is BPL or PLC in europe that uses the HF spectrum for transmission. Over long unshielded agind powerlines, this == big fscking antenna. Hence the bleed, and RF issues ensue.
They have also stated (the ARRL and others) repeatedly that they have no problem with BPL itself. They have problems with the power companies that are trying to roll this out to make an extra buck or two. I mean, lets face it, many power companies have problems just keeping the power going, let alone BPL... and to have to handle interference complaints as well?
But in any case, the people who are against BPL, as I said, are against the version that uses the HF spectrum. Not just parts of the HF spectrum, but the ENTIRE HF spectrum from around 3 to 30+MHz. They support other means readily, such as the BPL system that was being developed in the desert that used gigahertz transmission frequencies instead of HF freqs... or the aforementioned fiber wound around the power lines, and some companies ALREADY have cable wound around the powerlines that they use themselves.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
It's not a neutral wire, it's a ground wire. Servicepeople use it when they're working on a line. (It's generally a good idea to tie the power line to ground just in case someone energizes it before you're don't working on it.) It also serves as lightning protection. The ground wire is strung higher up than the power lines, so that's what the lightning will hit (and destroy) first.
Here is a link to the BPL interference video...this might change some minds of people.
http://216.167.96.120/BPL_Trial-web.mpg
your inquiry started out with mock sympathy for "Poor Jim", and the rest was dripping with sarcasm
Shit, sorry, I'll remember to turn off my sense of humour the next time I post and mark everything with mock <sarcasm> tags, just to ensure that I can't possibly offend anyone, even ham radio enthusiasts. How bad of me not to have already done so!
What kind of answer did you really expect?
An explanation of the terms? I wasn't the only one confused by the poor grammer and assumed knowlege on the part of the author. I was sort of hoping someone with a sense of humour might have picked up on the simple, light tone of the post but I forgot; this is Slashdot.
If you _really_ want to learn something, lose the attitude
Well I've learnt something, but it probably isn't what you thought I'd learn, and I happen to like my attitude and sense of humour as they are thanks.
Oh and </sarcasm>
Part of the reason for the protest has been that the power utilities have been very poor in the manner they respond to RFI complaints caused by their equipment . With that being a fact, why should hams trust that the utilities will do any better with BPL.
BPL can work, however, as it is being proposed, it is not setup to properly protect the liscensed users of the bandwidth that these systems will be radiating in. The power companies are lobbying to put in the system that requires them to do the least amount of work. Not a single one has proposed a system that would mitigate their response.
The United Power Line Council recently showed it had no real arguments against the hams cases when it responded to FCC comments by saying they were the true experts and "not a misinformed set of armchair amateurs that still use vacuum tube transmitters." Wow, name calling in a document submitted to the FCC. The simple fact is that they have not been able to refute the technical arguments. They are now trying to buy influence and namecall in order to get their way.
Me think analog good thing. Disaster happen. Say chemical plant go boom. People go quick!! But only, me say, maybe eight police in whole small town!!!! Amateur people trained in MARS unit (funny name, huh?) help evacuate people. Good thing!
Unfortunately, broadband over power lines isn't win-win if it means another form of communication is rendered useless. The FCC doesn't support an amateur radio service just because "we're the one's what love freedom!" Amateur radio operators routinely perform volunteer services in emergencies. The amateur service encourages a pool of people self-trained in communications equipment. It has social value and it is inappropriate to think of eliminating it as akin to the passing of the neanderthal.
Xeger is no ham.
See Alan Crosswell's site for more information on BPL interference in his area.
All it takes is one location to roll out BPL, and the HF band is affected world-wide.
I predict the following:
Before anyone says how heartless I am to those poor ham radio operators: I am one. I'm just a realist.
In any situation like this, someone invariably gets picked as a 'test case.' Jim just happened to be the one.
What he experienced in terms of RF 'noise pollution' would become all too common if BPL were to be widely deployed. The NTIA report and the ARRL's own technical committee have demonstrated this in gruesome detail.
Want some more real-life examples of the kind of crap BPL is capable of spreading? Go here.
There are plenty of existing ways to deliver broadband to homes without polluting the HF spectrum. BPL exists only to serve the pocketbooks of its equipment manufacturers, and the shareholders of power companies, at the expense of EVERYONE (not just amateur radio ops) who uses the HF spectrum. If it becomes widespread, commercial aviation, military, and the federal government's HF users will ALL be affected in short order, and it will probably get shut down anyway as a result.
Why waste any more time on it at all?
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
next time just post your pithy observations without the bullshit and maybe you'll get a civilized answer back. Until then , all you are gonna get is FUCK YOU posts like this one.
The reason for a ground is to allow for the fact that things break, and that the neutral can short out. The ground makes the easiest path for electricity back to ground. Its essentially a failsafe "neutral".
How the wires are designed depends on where you are. In three-phase systems which you seem to be used to, it's common to have a ground wire shielding the others from lightning strikes (not to be confused with the "live" ground you have in your house in places like this).
Other places, you find 5-phase with floating ground (not to be confused with "earthed" ground), where the ground wire is quite essential.
Regards,
--
*Art
I seems to me that if power companies want to use power lines for data transmission they should find some way to shield them. Perhaps this is too expensive. If so, run fiber or coax.
Perhaps as power lines are replaced or upgraded they could be replace with shielded lines suitable for data transmission use. I suspect that it would be cheaper just to run addtitional fiber when doing the replacement, but perhaps not.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
Reply Comments by to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
by Benjamin S. Gelb, KF4KJQ, a graduating senior at Thomas Jefferson High School
for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia.
Before the
Federal Communications Commission
Washington, D.C. 20554
In the Matter of
Carrier Current Systems, including Broadband over
Power Line Systems
)ET Docket No. 03-104
Amendment of Part 15 regarding new requirements and measurement guidelines for A
ccess Broadband over Power Line Systems
) ET Docket No. 04-37
To: The Commission
Reply Comments to Notice of Proposed Rule Making (04-37)
Reply Comments by to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking
by Benjamin S. Gelb
I have been a licensed Amateur Radio operator for eight years, completed multipl
e physics and electronics courses and have countless hours of hands-on experienc
e experimenting with radio and electronics equipment. I am a graduating senior a
t Thomas Jefferson High School for
Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia and will be attending MIT in the
fall.
The following are reply comments to various comments on the NRPM (04-37) by Curr
ent Technologies and Ambient Corporation.
Current Technologies asserts that "Current Technologies implementation of BPL is
noninterfering." I dispute Current Technologies' assertion that "Current Techn
ologies implementation of BPL is non-interfering." There seems to be a great div
ision between those who believe BPL will be a
source of harmful interference, and those who do not. I contend this division is
not a result of "misunderstandings about how BPL works" on the part of amateur
radio operators and many other individuals and organizations but rather a misund
erstanding of basic physics on the part of
both the Commission and Current Technologies.
Current Technologies states on page 14 that "Access BPL devices do not use power
lines as antennas. They use power lines to conduct data signals, not radiate th
em."
I'm sure that Current Technologies' goal is to conduct signals rather than radia
te them. Unfortunately, Current Technologies, no matter how much they wish to d
eny it, is bound by the same laws of physics as every one else. When an RF curre
nt is coupled into a conductor, that conductor will radiate. Period. This is bec
ause of the electric and magnetic fields created by the charge and current on th
e conductor.
In coaxial cable the fields are contained by a shield at ground potential. In ba
lanced line, equal and opposite fields from correctly spaced parallel conductors
mathematically cancel. Power lines have RF characteristics that are irregular a
nd variable, and do not resemble either type of feed line. Therefore, BPL system
s that couple RF to the power line will cause the power line to
radiate. Period.
This has been shown to be true in the real world. A video1 produced by the Ameri
can Radio Relay League demonstrates actual received interference in four trial a
reas, one of which is operated by Current Technologies.
Because of the great disagreement between BPL promoters and those who stand to b
e impacted by the implementations of BPL systems, it seems that the Commission o
ught to be obligated to, at the very least, conduct some sort of real world test
ing of its own to determine the radiation characteristics of power lines. To dat
e, no effort to validate the claims of either side has been made by the Commissi
on.
So far, the Commissions attitude seems to be to accept the word of BPL manufactu
rers as fact, no questions asked, despite the fact that many statements made by
BPL proponents and subsequently parroted by the Commission are embarrassingly no
nsensical to someone with even
the most rudimentary technical education (e.g. stating that the characteristics
of a power line are somewhere between a waveguide and an antenna in the NPRM). M
eanwhile, the Com
Can anyone actually point to skywave QRM from BPL? Or is all the intereference detected so far local only?
BTW, I find power lines locally interfering with AM broadcast mobile reception today, somehow we still live.
What if the power company were to send tinfoil hats to local ARRL members? Wouldn't that solve the problem?
When your plane or ship goes down due to faulty
communications, will those tinfoil hats help?
I find you posts highly Insightful (+1) and Interesting(+1). Please subscribe me to your news letter. Yours,
Charles P. Wetherspoon, Esq.
"...there are many services using radio spectrum in the HF regions...These hobbyists, who use a very small portion of the frequencies in question...and regulations in place stating that no service is allowed to interfere with another. Period."
I live near the ocean. Now, people who own property near or on the shore have certain rights to access. However, the shore and the ocean is public property, and legal access can and should not be denied to all.
I view the radio spectrum in a similar way; as public property. And although many people or organizations may have licence to exclusive bands or frequencies, still, the public should have access to some bandwidth. The public are served to this right and privilege in the amateur radio service. Amateurs need not justify their existence by claiming public service, emergency service, technological advancement or other excuses(although these justifications are viable). The amateur radio service is justified on its own merits.
BPL, if used, will certainly incringe on the amateur radio service, just as an oil slick will ruin a public beach.
N3IQA
and they don't seem to have any references to radio interference. Do you have any of their studies to look at? have they come up with a solution that no one else has? Maybe I just don't see it, but I looked both at the FAQ and just ran a general search there, can't find it. thanks. I understand your enthusiasm for it, I live rural and would like some sort of broadband, but can't see how they can address the interference issue. I like my radios the same as my computer.
I honestly don't think the general public has a clue about how much amateur radio operators do beyond being just a hobby. They're mentioned in news reports all the time, but people don't understand it, so they just ignore it.
For example, recently we got hit by a few tornadoes, so I popped some batteries in an HT my dad gave me, headed for the basement, and flipped on a local repeater to listen to the weather spotters. As the reports of hail and tornado locations came in, my neighbors commented that they always wondered where those reports came from.
Every natural disaster I can think of has had news reports of how essential the hams have been.. everything from Hurricane Andrew to 9/11. Heck, hams even help with communications in things as minor as parades and marathons. And they train annually to ensure that they can operate without any infrastructure. I've seen some interesting setups to get away from relying on gas powered generators.
Personally, these are people that I'd like to keep happy.. because when the shit hits the fan, they're our most reliable communications.
Don Saklad's pager just exploded.
In theory, you can use almost any pair of wires to carry a broadband signal. That's because in theory, any pair of wires are perfectly conductive. Also, as soon as an extra electron tries to enter one end, another one drops out the other end, instantaneously, and if you try to pull an electron out of one end, another will be sucked in at the other end, equally instantaneously.
..... well, they don't have a word for it, they call an engineer to fix it. But what you need to remember is that the potential difference (voltage) across a capacitor can only change gradually, never suddenly; and the current through an inductor also can only change gradually, never suddenly.
It ain't like that in practice.
Imagine a drainpipe stuffed with tennis balls. When you try to push in an extra tennis ball, what happens is that all the other tennis balls give a little, and for one fleeting instant there really is an extra ball in the pipe. Then the balls expand back to normal size and one is shoved out the far end.
Now, any pair of wires will have a capacitance (since they are conductors separated by an insulator), an inductance (since they are wires; at low frequencies you need a full-on coil to get any effect, but at high frequencies any slight bend will do the job) and a resistance (since they aren't perfect conductors). It's what electrical engineers call a composite impedance, and what everybody else calls
For any given transmission line, if you stick a battery across the terminals at one end and a resistor across the terminals at the other end, look at each end with an oscilloscope and have some magical way of lining up the time axes, you won't see just a simple step change of voltage. When you apply the battery to the T.L., it looks like some composite impedance (which it is) and likely draws more current than the resistive load at the far end wants, since it's charging up the capacitance of the line -- or less than that, since it's charging through an inductance. One or the other phenomenon will win out every time.
Once the capacitance of the line has charged -- via the inductance and resistance of the line -- it then begins discharging into the resistor on the far end. Actually, it doesn't wait at all, but starts discharging as soon as it has begun charging. And what you may even see, is a pulse of current reflected back towards the battery, if too much current went in at first compared to what the resistor was expecting. You can even get multiple reflections if the first one isn't exactly right. What you essentially see on the scope traces is a damped sine wave at the frequency at which the resistance and capacitance of the line resonate -- and a delay between applying power from the source and seeing it at the load.
That's what you get with DC. With AC, the capacitance and inductance tend to distort the shape of the waveform, but not change the frequency -- though it's very likely that other frequencies will be added in. Also, anything under a few hundred kHz behaves mostly like DC -- albeit more-or-less-slowly-changing DC -- but broadband networks need carrier frequencies measured in MHz, and by the timed you get to that sort of frequency, the AC phenomena are well established.
Now if all you are concerned about is getting the maximum energy throughput, as are the electricity board for example, then you want to minimise resistance (which turns energy into heat -- capacitance and inductance just store it in electric and magnetic fields, respectively, then give it up again) even if that makes the line highly capacitive or inductive. All that will happen is that you'll get a huge reflection the first time you connect up, then a series of ever-decreasing ones, but most of the power from your source ends up in the load even if it takes awhile to make it down the line, and even if the shape of the waveform is significantly altered.
If you want a transmission line that does not
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
ARRL's is well-known for going to DEFCON 1 whenever amateur radio spectrum is threatened. That's a good thing, because there would be no such thing as amateur HF spectrum if not for their lobbying efforts. Like the open source people who had extensive involvement in creating the Internet as we know it today, amateurs were the pioneers of almost all modes of modern wireless communications.
I do not understand why BPL has to exist in conlict with HF. Broadband is essentially a big fat RF channel. It could be made to work at much higher frequencies that will not bounce off the ionosphere and turn the HF spectrum into a global RF septic tank. If it was done properly, they could probably get more bandwidth (and therefore higher speeds) by using higher frequencies.
One of the other posts commented on the viability of wrapping fiber optic cable around the power lines. I like that idea best of all. No RF problem, OC-3 speed, what's not to like?
Those bastards!
The ITU (International Telecommunications Union) regulates the HF spectrum on an INTERNATIONAL basis, because HF signals to not respect national borders. If BPL causes international interference problems, the ITU may well regulate it out of existence. http://www.itu.int/home/
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Isn't it just a matter of time before somebody builds a receiver that is essentially a BPL packet sniffer?
I seems to me that if power companies want to use power lines for data transmission they should find some way to shield them.
Then you're back to stringing new copper to every house - the same problem as stringing (or burying, depending on zoning) purpose-built comm cable.
Perhaps this is too expensive.
Bingo!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I have some minor experience with anti-BPL issues as my father is a ham and he hates it but he understands its potential as well. I think it has a great potential because it allows undeveloped places to get one line and reduce costs. Instead of 2 or 3 or 4 lines you get one that will probably be paid at government expense. It would provide power, Voice over IP and internet access and possibly something akin to a cable service. This has the potential to put information about the entire world at the hands of people who until now won't have even known where to start in many cases. I see this as an early attempt at this technology but we can't let it die now because the first attempt didn't work.
The problem is that the powerlines are a bad transmission line for high frequencies, because they are designed for use at 50 or 60 Hz only.
So the use of RF on these lines is limited to a couple of MHz, you cannot carry things like WiFi (2400 MHz) over powerlines.
Of course the use of low frequencies also limits the bitrate. As it is also shared between subscribers on the same power segment, the bitrate per subscriber is not very attractive.
Use of power lines for broadband should be abandoned. More suitable lines should be used. Even telephone lines are more suitable (also because there are separate lines to each subscriber).
Or else, more suitable lines (like fiber) should be put in place.
Geeze ... try and offer an original suggestion, get modded down to flamebait.
I understand the problem quite clearly: BPL radiates in all of the HF ham bands (and if what you say is true, the entire HF spectrum) and keeps hams from having our lovely DX chats.
If there is indeed a BPL transmission technology that throws off less RFI, or puts out RFI in a more tractable part of the spectrum, then the ARRLshould by all means pursue regulations guaranteeing the use of that transmission technology, as opposed to the current disruptive one.
But my point is still valid: rather than exchanging heated words with FCC, they'd do well to stop the problem at its source. If nobody wants to buy broadband over power lines because they've all grown accustomed to low-cost community-operated wireless networking, the power companies will have no market for BPL in the areas where BPL would have previously been the only choice for broadband!
You just don't get it, do you?
What you should have learned is there's a big difference between good-natured jesting and hurtful sarcasm. If someone tells you you've crossed that line, you don't then proceed to spew yet some more of that very attitude, you apologize if you give a shit. Obviously, you don't.
What you also didn't learn is that as long as you continue to do this, as the previous poster AC said, all you're gonna get is FUCK YOU replies.
(And that's not just because you're on Slashdot. I'd tell you the same to your face in real life if you came on to me with an attitude like yours).
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Correct, I am no ham. As I stated in my post, I am a licensed amateur radio enthusiast. I don't have an HF rig and can't hear CW for shit (I learned just enough Morse code to pass my Technician test). I devote my energy mostly to experiments with data transmission in the VHF, UHF and microwave bands: amateur packet radio, amateur TV, and so forth. I don't have enough experience, or enough contacts with the local ham community, to consider myself a well-rounded ham.
However: just because I'm no timer, doesn't mean that my opinion doesn't matter.
Notice the halfway sarcastic comment about garage doors opening and closing. I understand that RFI from BPL equipment affects more than just hams. That's why my suggestion is more valid than ever.
Rather than destroying BPL equipment, I would pour my energy into giving locals an alternative to BPL, for free, and thereby cost the power company money in the long run due to lost business. But that's just me. You go ahead and destroy whatever you feel like.
Heh, over here in right-pond land, we already knew this. But then, we've been here before anyway.
Matt...
Save the Bottom Line
Hey, moderators, just because it sounds good doesn't mean it is right. NewtonsLaw is totally whacked and needs to be modded way, way down. Read the various responses to the parent for some much more informative data (informative as in "correct").
Personal experience with power companies is that they don't care if they are causing interference.
They usually have one engineer/technician that works interference complaints.
Most cases are arching insulators.
They usually refuse to fix the cause until the line is taken down for routine maintenance even though the FCC rules demand harmful interferrence must cease immediately.
It really makes no difference if the persons being interferred with are hams or the government.
Harmful interference with a station in a licensed service must not occur and must cease immediately when notified.
This is not just US Law but is in several International Treaties.
IMHO -- Many of these power company "engineers" no longer come from a "ham" background and have a vested interest in seeing BPL work. Besides they are power and computer engineers not communications engineers.
This issue is easy to solve by sending the FCC listening truck out and documenting whether and how much interference BPL causes. This must have already happened for the FCC to start slapping fines on the power company.
Of course do the math - 10,000 per day the power company only needs 10,000 customers to make that up! Now when if the FCC will start throwing the CEO into jail at 6 months a violation maybe this stupid idea will be put to bed.
BTW the ARRL probably got involved because the power company tried to "stiff-arm" the hams.
Supra et Ultra
Well, if it makes you feel any better... I didnt mod you down ;)
:(
But yes, and the one thing I have been in favor of all along is community based wireless networks. I submitted an ask slashdot a good while back asking if anyone had experience in either setting up and running or at least belonging to a co-op wireless service.
I could see a good potential market there for locally owned, co-operative internet services. The community purchases the incoming lines (maybe a single t3 for the entire community in some cases) and everyone who participates pays an equal share for the rent and upkeep and such...
That was rejected by the editors tho...
But you do, in that case have a valid point, but I would wager that rather than do one or the other, people should do both... fuss at the FCC and keep on them to monitor and enforce their own rules, AND look for, support and propose alternatives...
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
How about high-altitude platforms for broadband, plus other uses?
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Enby in Waltham
After the last story on here about this, I looked into it a little bit. I was able to find that bpl has been tried in Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Austria, Finland, England(originally by Nortel), singapore, and holland. There may be others but I'm not sure. In these cases, it was called off because of a)interference, and b)the high costs. This isn't a technology that can be used in rural areas, its too expensive. This will just provide another option for people with existing options(not a bad idea, but not what they're saying.)
I was able to find a website that tracked complaints, but can't find it now, there were over 60 complaints filed with the fcc, only 2 of which were resolved(probably more now as a few were in cedar rapids.) The recent case with jim was used because he kept such good records, even having the power company turn the system off to compare.
Just a couple things, I would love to see more options for internet, but with companies like boeing against this, and also the possibililty to knock out dsl service, I just don't like it.
-Tom
I used to live in a town that used Zellwigger equipment to turn on off-peak hotwater systems at night. You would get this ~ 1000Hz sound through your stereo when they turned it on. Audio power supplies are simply not designed to stop frequencies in that range. A well designed power ssupply will work better at RF because its a known problem - the big ripple capacitors have enough inductance to be inneffective at RF so you put a few picofarads of tag-tantalum or similar across them to shunt the RF.
But when you start imposing RF on the power system, I doubt that even this is going to filter it out. The result is going to be large amounts of RF to your audio amp, some of which is going to get rectified and which will reduce the headroom of your amp even if rectification does not introduce audible noise.
So I think this is another reason this was a bad idea.
Squirrel!
FYI It's WAY more important than "protecting sad lonely guys holed up in their bunkers" - Ham radio is often the ONLY thing working after a natural disaster ... all that broadband goes bye-bye with just ONE downed power line. HAM operators, OTOH, have a network that can work off car batteries when they need to.
The only communications left in Mexico City after their disastrous quake in the early 80s was HAM. Phone lines and satellite were all close to FUBAR. The first news out of Mexico City came via an odd bounce to a Kiwi HAM, who was about to sign off. He stayed on the air and spent the next several hours spreading news and relaying messages. I spent hours translating messages coming out of Mexico and relaying them to the Red Cross or other authorities - and the operators with the licenses were there more hours than I was.
I was saying that in general, not on a power line. A line has appreciable TL characteristics at a given frequency starting from when its length hits lambda/10, roughly. Since BPL uses VHF frequencies, of course it has TL characteristics on multi-mile power lines. However, if you transmit over a very short length of power line, say, a 1cm chunk, it will more or less *not* act as a transmission line. This is because the AC waveform doesn't have the 'space' to change appreciably from one end of the wire to the other (horrible explanation, I know, but workable). The point was that length is a factor in whether something behaves like a transmission line at a given frequency, not just the characteristics of the line.
As to the rest of it - you don't understand info theory. There is a tradeoff between bitrate (capacity), bandwidth, and power/SNR. There is a tradeoff between symbol rate and bits per symbol, within a limit. There is a tradeoff between achievable bits per symbol at a given error rate and SNR. Clever systems trade on these such that whichever quantities may be fixed (usually SNR and BW), they can achieve the best capacity, or alternately for a fixed capacity can minimize SNR or BW. Given a sufficiently powerful transmitter, you can achieve an arbitrary capacity on a powerline, even using a fixed frequency and bandwidth.
Hell, even a 50 Hz bandwidth can transmit gigabits of data - C=BW*log2(1+S/N). You want 1 megabit per second on a 50 Hz channel? You need SNR=2^(10^6/50)-1 (not in dB, just a ratio), or 120411 dB. Which is ridiculous for many reasons, but possible in theory. The problem that this would cause, which is what the hams are complaining about with BPL, is that you'll need to use huge amounts of power, which means you will spew huge amounts of radiated interference. Since BPL operates partially within ham frequencies, the interference screws them up.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
The usage of the entire HF spectrum (3-30 Mhz) for BPL is an abomination. There will be tens of thousands of 10 watt broadband transmitters hooked up to what are essentially longwire antennas, which will effectively destroy EVERYONE's ability to use this precious and shared resource. On HF I routinely make contact with people on other continents who are using 10 to 100 watts, using antennas shorter than any BPL segment. Even in places that make BPL illegal, there will be huge problems for anyone who uses the HF spectrum, since the ionosphere will allow the crud to propagate worldwide.
A "no urinating" section in the community swimming pool won't protect you from the kids on the other end of the pool. BPL is pissing on all other users of the spectrum, big time.
Be who you are and say what you feel, because the people who mind don't matter, and the people who matter don't mind.
"NTIA recommends a number of refinements to the modified rules proposed for BPL systems and believes that the Commission's proposals as extrapolated herein will fully alleviate the concerns of all parties to this proceeding. NTIA believes that these rules will prove to provide a reasonable and safe approach to reducing interference risks from BPL systems and expediting effective provisions for elimination of interference from BPL systems. Because these proposed rule modifications effect reductions in on-going interference risks, they should be placed into effect as soon as possible. Moreover, these rules create an environment in which BPL proponents can properly gauge investment risks and fulfill the protection requirements of radio communications. http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fccfilings/2004/B PLComments_06042004.htm
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/fccfilings/2004/b pl/
- Phwanger
Hi Gang,
Wayne K9DI & Leader Dog Patriot here. I hold and Amateur Extra class license from the FCC.
Sorry, wrong number. This technology is not suited for rural or underdeveloped areas, and the proponents of BPL have in fact stated that they don't see it as economically feasible to serve those types of areas, but would rather "cherry pick" large metropolitan areas that have the user base to make BPL profitable for them.
Something that is not mentioned here is that Japan tried and banned BPL because of the interference issues, same story in Austria. However, the BPL proponents in the US would like to sweep that under the rug and pull the wool over the eyes of US citizens and policy makers.
As stated in other posts a large scale rollout of BPL in the US would pollute RF globally and I would like to be a fly on the wall at the state department when notes of protest start arrriving from other governments about the mess. What about the negative impact this technology would have on air operations, not to mention the military's use of HF frequencies?
We already have the technology to sniff and capture the packets used in BPL, very similar to what's used when sniffing about wifi hotspots. So, security IS or should be a major concern to anyone thinking of using BPL. Not to mention that as a part 15 system BPL would have to accept interference from a licensed service such as say...FEMA, the DoD, Amateur radio operators, etc, etc. Funny thing, is that, a fairly inexpensive 100 watt transceiver would, and in some cases a low power (QRP) rig with 5 watts, be enough to disrupt a BPL system. US Amatuers are allowed up to 1500 watts to play with on HF.
I'm not sure what happened to the BPL system in Mannassus Virginia on 26-27 June 2004 when Field Day was going on. Would be interesting to see if all that RF being slung had any effect. Perhaps, that's why Alliant pulled the plug, pun intended, on it's Cedar Rapids trial? Food for thought.
P.S. Historical Note: Cedar Rapids is the former home of Collins Radio, a Long time leader in the radio industry. In fact, Art Collins (W0CXX), the owner of Collins Radio, was friends with General Curtis LeMay (K0GRL). LeMay was instrumental in getting the Air Force to try out the then experimental mode now known as Single Side Band (SSB) for use with Long Range Bombers. Up to that time the Air Force used Double Sideband AM or Morse Code for communications. Sorry, the perils of being a History major...:)
73 de Wayne K9DI es Leader Dog Patriot